


Domestic Scene With Urban Housewife

by tielan



Category: The Losers, The Losers (2010)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-15
Updated: 2011-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:12:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jolene feels out of place amidst her husband's friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domestic Scene With Urban Housewife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oh_la_fraise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_la_fraise/gifts).



> I am slightly terrified on posting this. Mostly because I haven't read too much in the fandom and I haven't read the comics, so I don't know the usual characterisations or plots. And it was going to be longer, but I couldn't finish the longer version in time for the deadline. I just hope you like it!

Over by the window, with Linwood Junior a cloth-veiled lump at her breast, Jolene listens to the conversation taking place at the kitchen table. She’s never heard her husband planning a mission before. She’s not sure what it says about him that she’s hearing this now.

"Only two exits from the staging area.”

“Four if you count the two in the next section over."

Pooch looks horrified. “The next section over is at least half a mile!”

“Getting soft?”

“Pooch does not get soft. He might not have the energy to go running so often anymore but he does not get soft.”

Jensen snorts as he waves one finger in the air. “You know, Pooch still sounds really stupid talking in the third person.”

“There’re plenty of places to get out on foot,” says Aisha, one slim hand sweeping over the map. “The whole north face for one.”

"Foot's bad.” Clay’s voice rasps over the rest of them, cutting through the argument like a chainsaw in a forest. “No cover.”

"If we put Cougar high..."

Pooch stares at Jensen, who's casually scratching under his arm. "Are you kidding? With all those civilians about? Too dangerous."

"Considering he's paid to hit a fly on the wall at a thousand yards," says Clay, "That won't be a problem."

"Problem is finding high ground," Cougar glances up from the sniper rifle he’s methodically cleaning over on the couch. Years of first being with Pooch, then married to him, means Jolene’s well aware of the range of weaponry that her husband and his friends work with. But it’s a little disconcerting to see the way Cougar takes apart his sniper rifle. Not because it’s a sniper rifle, either. It just looks too much like he’s making love to his weapon.

"The whole staging area’s pretty much level," Aisha says, her fingers marking off distances across the plan layout, neat and dark. “So yeah, Cougar’s got a point.”

"There's the stands."

"Yeah, but _we'll_ be in the stands.”

“Along with a couple hundred others.”

It’s not her house, it’s certainly not her mission. In spite of her marriage and long association with these guys, it’s not really her business what they’re planning. Still, Jolene feels compelled to ask. "Pooch?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"This _is_ a kids soccer game you're talking about, isn't it?"

There's a moment of silence as the five people in the small living space turn to look at her, and she feels a little hot at their stares, even with the window open and the breeze blowing in cool off the street.

-oOo-

Right now, Linwood Junior mostly eats and shits.

He sleeps rather than cries, a fact for which Jolene is fervently grateful. It’s bad enough not to have her mom around, although they talk almost every day on the phone, but it’d be so much worse if Linwood Junior wasn’t a cheerful, easygoing baby who seems to have fallen into sleep patterns the way he’s taken to just about everything in life.

As Jensen observes at breakfast the next morning, food goes in one end and comes out the other and that’s about all the kid does at this stage. Which prompts an argument with Pooch over the idea that his son - his little miracle of life - is nothing more than an eating and pooping machine.

"It's true!"

"Hey! Don't say that about my son!"

“I’m not insulting him or anything. I’m just saying, that’s all he does right now. I’m sure that when he’s grown up a little more he’ll talk and chat and maybe play soccer and pee standing up, but right now, all he does is eat and shit. And sleep.”

"Shut up, you two.” Aisha says from the kitchen where Clay is sliding a cup of coffee across the benchtop towards her, his eyes wary on her face.

Jolene doesn’t know what’s going on there - she still hasn’t managed to wrangle the story out of Pooch who, she gathers, is alternately irritated and amused by Aisha, as compared to Jensen, who’s alternately terrified and admiring - but the young woman’s husky voice cuts off the argument like scissors through a thread before she turns to Jolene, temporarily ignoring the coffee.

“Will you be coming to the game, Jolene?”

She hasn’t really thought about going along. It’s a kid’s soccer game; not something she’s really interested in. And she’s still coping with the fact that, after her release from the hospital, they couldn’t go home to their apartment, but had to take up residence here. “Is it safe?”

Another of those moments of silence blows through the room.

Jensen looks down to Cougar, lying alongside Linwood Junior where he’d been mostly silent and only occasionally tickling her son on the belly to keep him laughing. Pooch grimaces as he looks at their leader, who grimaces down at the untouched coffee on the bench.

Aisha turns on her stool, drawing all eyes, breaking the silence. “Look, do you really think Max doesn’t know about your families? Where they are, what they’re doing? After what went down last week, he probably knows everything about everyone who once shook your hand! Going is no more of a risk than it already is.”

She’s addressing the men more than Jolene, using that confident, knowing voice that’s probably never had a moment of doubt in her life. Jolene rather envies the other woman, although whatever Aisha’s life was, it’s come with a cost. The other woman doesn’t share her secrets, and can be very prickly at times.

“That’s a pretty big risk,” says Jensen after a moment.

“Max should still be recuperating after what we put him through last week.” Anger tinges Clay’s voice, but his gaze is steady when it looks at Jolene, answering her question. “It’ll be safe enough.”

There’s a question in there which awaits an answer, and Jolene considers it.

She glances at her husband, sitting at the table with toast on his plate. He looks like he wants to say she should stay home, but he’s got to know they’d only argue about it.

She looks at her bumbling, burbling son lying on the floor beside Cougar, four days old and not a care in the world.

She looks at the mish-mash of people standing around the living space of this huge apartment Aisha owns, where they’ve been holed up the last two days while working out what happens next - for the guys as a unit, for Pooch and Jolene as new parents, for them all as people who aren’t exactly easy or comfortable to know.

There’s a bigger question within the question, too.

Does she want to be part of this life that Pooch lives when he’s not at home? Does she get a choice? She swore to love and honour Pooch, although they made a point of avoiding the word ‘obey’. But she can still walk away - take her four day old son and back away from this part of her husband’s life.

Maybe she’d save her life and Linwood Junior’s in the process.

But if this Max knows about Pooch, then he knows about her. If he knows about her, he knows about her son. If she’s not safe with Pooch and his friends, where is she safe?

She’s not a soldier, but she’s a soldier’s wife. And she’s not about to go back on that.

“I’m in,” Jolene says.


End file.
